How to sort inside brackets (parentheses, etc.) in Vim

Sorting text inside brackets, parentheses, or curly brackets in Vim can be done with a simple command. However, cases where the text is not appropriately formatted may require more effort and a better approach.

Basic Sorting Command

Suppose you have this CSS code

.selector {
    width: 100vw;
    display: flex;
    border: 1px solid red;
    color: blue;
}

Place the cursor inside the curly brackets and enter the following command

vi{:sor

Sorting Text Inside Square Brackets

[
    85,
    33,
    2,
    55,
    5,
]

This is the same idea but don’t forget the n parameter to sort the numbers for humans.

Use this command

vi[:sor n

But it doesn’t always work

The reason why the above commands work is because the elements to sort are separated by a newline character.

Now, imagine you have a list formatted like below

[88, 54, 23, 8, 39, 16, 2, 5]

The previous command doesn’t work anymore.

To solve this problem, you might think it could be a good idea to create a cumbersome keybind in your .vimrc

nnoremap <leader>sor F[a<CR><Esc>f]i, <Esc>vi[:s/, /,\r/g<CR>vi[:sort n<CR>vi[:s/,\n/, /g<CR>%<S-J>xf]XX

After having placed your cursor inside the brackets, this very long command performs three actions:

1. it adds a newline character after each number;
2. it sorts the numbers;
3. it reformats the sorted numbers to appear on a single line.

Obviously, don’t do this… even if it kinda works and that the keybind looks funny.

Write Python code (or any interpreted language, for that matter)

A more reliable solution would be to call the built-in sorted() Python function.

Write the text you want to sort in Python syntax.

print(sorted([88, 54, 23, 8, 39, 16, 2, 5]))

Place your cursor on the line and call Python by entering the following command

:.!python3

The numbers are now sorted.